The New Brunswick Public Library Service has added a new collection of French-language ebooks.

‚ÄúWe are continually looking for ways to improve library service to our patrons,‚ÄĚ said Post-Secondary Education, Training and Labour Minister Jody Carr. ‚ÄúToday‚Äôs announcement provides patrons access to a greater quantity and variety of ebooks in French.‚ÄĚ

The new collection is available through a service called pretnumerique.ca. New Brunswick is the first province outside of Quebec to offer access to this service, which will add about 4,000 titles.

With this addition the Electronic Library New Brunswick now features two collections of ebooks. A bilingual service with primarily English content, OverDrive, has been available since 2010.

‚ÄúProviding all New Brunswickers free access to these types of resources and tools that support life-long learning is an important element to achieving our mandate of supporting people, skills and jobs,‚ÄĚ said Carr. ‚ÄúOur government is committed to providing equitable services in both official languages, and for users of all abilities.‚ÄĚ

This resource enhances the services available to persons with a disability including access to the collectiions of the Centre for Equitable Library Access and the availability of adaptive workstations, which will be available in all 63 public libraries across the province by the end of 2014.

Library card holders may download ebooks anytime by visiting the library service website and selecting the Electronic Library New Brunswick and pretnumerique.ca or Overdrive.